"Open Innovation" is the word of the day as authors, PARC collaborators talk shop.

The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) is known beyond Silicon Valley for its role developing products—Ethernet, WSYIWYG editors, laser printing. But mentions of those historic heights were kept at a minimum during this week's Power of 10 conference. The message of the day was clear with the first words to greet guests at the registration table (via both conference workers and a commemorative bookmark).

"Just wanted to let you know, 'Xerox PARC' is so 10 years ago. Today, we're 'PARC, a Xerox company.'"

PARC's Power of 10 is a year-long series of events, including public-friendly guest presentations and this half-day conference, to commemorate the company's first ten years of independent operation. In 2002 Xerox incorporated PARC as an independent, wholly owned subsidiary, shifting the R&D pioneers toward an open innovation business model that took center stage on Thursday.

Open innovation itself consists of companies finding ideas from both internal and external sources, then collaborating with others to implement them, theoretically sharing both risk and reward during the process. It's not a new practice by any means, but the terminology was coined soon after PARC's independence, with the book Open Innovation by Henry Chesbrough. He's the executive director of the Program in Open Innovation at UC Berkeley and happened to be the day's first keynote speaker.

Chesbrough coined the term "open innovation" and sees patent abuse today as a deterrent to the model.

Chesbrough applauded PARC's operative structure, calling it a much more connected means to innovation. To illustrate it, he compared the idea with a funnel. When a company operates with an internal focus, it limits what information comes in and channels it in one direction. But, "in open innovation, you drill holes in the funnel to let good ideas in, and out," he noted. The openness leads to more ideas, better ideas, and ideas that become reality more quickly. In open innovation, Chesbrough sees the lead company on a product operating as more of an orchestrator than creator.

"In a world with lots of useful info and good ideas, the companies that are going to win are the ones that put this together before others do," Chesbrough said. "You must orchestrate an ecosystem on behalf of your customers."

Chesbrough's point was best emphasized after his presentation. The rest of the afternoon featured panels with representatives from a few PARC-collaborators. They all shared their projects, but the most eye-catching were Nicole Tricoukes, Senior Maverick at Motorola Solutions, and Davor Sutija, CEO of Thin Film.

During the panel she was on, Tricoukes showcased a "deconstructed computer that you can wear on your head." Core technologies for the product started at PARC and the Kopin Corporation developed the whole package a bit further, now working with Motorola Solutions to potentially market the item. Tricoukes sees it as a way to bring computer access into the field with on-location industries like construction. "You become Iron Man or RoboCop, practically applying augmented reality to industry problems."

On a separate panel, Sutija said ThinFilm is in the business of printed electronics. The company is working towards creating a low-power, printable, rewritable memory that uses a non-toxic polymer and can be attached to virtually anything. "Your stuff will talk to you in three to five years," he said.

Like the Kopin and Motorola Solutions headset, ThinFilm's product is the culmination of multiple efforts. PARC built the logic, ThinFilm specialized in memory, another company created the display, the batteries are being developed in Berkeley. The initiative started by identifying a potentially growing consumer need for easily reproduced technology. "The 'Internet of Things' will involve hundreds of billions of items," Sutija offered.

After dreaming up ThinFilm's concept, it was then a matter of sharing that idea with others and determining where their expertise could fit in. Sutija believes that "printed electronics will be as disruptive as search was ten years ago," and while the company's products are still getting off the ground, ThinFilm would certainly not be what it is today without the benefit of an open innovation approach.

Amid all the positives being discussed with open innovation, the conference seldom touched upon the gray area of intellectual property, and how it factors into an open innovation business model. By allowing external companies to access your ideas (and vice-versa), how do you know what rightfully belongs to whom when a new product becomes an ecosystem of items that already existed? Can the bureaucracy involved potentially bring open innovation to a halt? During a Q&A with Chesbrough, this came up. But rather than seeing intellectual property as a deterrent to open innovation, Chesbrough believes it is beneficial to the practice. He believes it's simply being abused at the moment.

"Intellectual property is sand in the gears of open innovation," he said. "A certain amount is helpful—it promotes exchange and collaboration while ensuring everyone gets something. But more is not better, it's a pendulum. Today it's probably swung too far the other way. Businesses exist to purchase patents with no intent to use them."

10 Reader Comments

I agree that IP is currently being abused to the detriment of all. It exacts a ludicrous toll through the expenditure of time, talent & capital, to say nothing of the penalties exacted through opportunity costs. The most rational course then, would be for enactment of legislation to ensure that 25% of annual Gross Domestic Product (at MINIMUM) be allocated (tax free, of course) to the MPAA/RIAA in recognition of the inestimable value they bestow upon society through their selfless pursuit of the arts; a like amount should undoubtedly be yielded to the purveyors of pipes though which we upload, download, text, e-mail, talk & status update moment by moment each & every day; another 25% surely shouldn't be begrudged our beloved political class, in recognition of the sage, egalitarian & just civilization they have so artfully crafted for we mere mortals; and absolutely no less than a 45% share can possibly suffice in our Defense Of The Homeland, and all related efforts to ensure that that each & every one of us not stray in thought, word or deed from the path that has lead us to our Brave New World!!! (And don't forget those Koch boys; such GOOD boys! They deserve a little sugar too!)

All this "open-innovation" talk is nice, but useless as very few companies will take on this model out of fear of IP abuse. The companies this approach is most useful for are the small start-ups who have one idea, but are incapable of building a full device that uses their idea or even actually building their one idea without outside help. If they had the ability, you can bet that they would try to do it all in-house. That's what the VCs who fund these start-ups eventually want to see because it can be hard to sell IP and make a return on investment, based on just an idea. A functioning product is a much more powerful selling tool.

i regularly leak fantastic ideas in the hopes that a bunch of people will see them and trip over themselves to be the first to implement it for me. i get nice things, they get rich. getting credit for an invention is nice, actually having it in your hands is even nicer.

Xerox PARC was a pre-PC/pre-Apple Think Tank that accelerated PC development. "PARC, A Xerox Company" is all abstract, marketing crap. AR helmets? (When there's still no real "killer app" use for AR.) Printable electronics? (Fine for prototypers, but not mainstream.) None of these reveals are exactly revolutionary, let alone original ideas. It feels like seeing what Professor Farnsworth wrote on a cocktail napkin... and then forgot that it's already been invented.

And I don't want to ignore Xerox PARC. It's accomplished far more than PARC has.

The most rational course then, would be for enactment of legislation to ensure that 25% of annual Gross Domestic Product (at MINIMUM) be allocated (tax free, of course) to the MPAA/RIAA in recognition of the inestimable value they bestow upon society through their selfless pursuit of the arts; a like amount should undoubtedly be yielded to the purveyors of pipes though which we upload, download, text, e-mail, talk & status update moment by moment each & every day; another 25% surely shouldn't be begrudged our beloved political class, in recognition of the sage, egalitarian & just civilization they have so artfully crafted for we mere mortals; and absolutely no less than a 45% share can possibly suffice in our Defense Of The Homeland, and all related efforts to ensure that that each & every one of us not stray in thought, word or deed from the path that has lead us to our Brave New World!!!

First off, this is your second sentence. Not one period in over 10 lines of text. Seriously?Second, I don't like libertarianism, but this has nothing to do with this article. Also, protip: Stop listening to pundits. Do your own research, make up your own mind.

The most rational course then, would be for enactment of legislation to ensure that 25% of annual Gross Domestic Product (at MINIMUM) be allocated (tax free, of course) to the MPAA/RIAA in recognition of the inestimable value they bestow upon society through their selfless pursuit of the arts; a like amount should undoubtedly be yielded to the purveyors of pipes though which we upload, download, text, e-mail, talk & status update moment by moment each & every day; another 25% surely shouldn't be begrudged our beloved political class, in recognition of the sage, egalitarian & just civilization they have so artfully crafted for we mere mortals; and absolutely no less than a 45% share can possibly suffice in our Defense Of The Homeland, and all related efforts to ensure that that each & every one of us not stray in thought, word or deed from the path that has lead us to our Brave New World!!!

First off, this is your second sentence. Not one period in over 10 lines of text. Seriously?Second, I don't like libertarianism, but this has nothing to do with this article. Also, protip: Stop listening to pundits. Do your own research, make up your own mind.

First: Please note the judicious use of semi-colons to achieve the desired structure. Second: I do not espouse Libertarianism, nor do I attend any other political party (except maybe for the "free" seafood buffet). Third: Thanks for the protip, but it's already been in use for some years now.

With at least one reader, I apparently failed in my satirical indictment of (some of) the un-inventive-hearts who feed at the trough of creativity, much to the detriment of the creatives, the creative process & society in general. PARC & creative commune = +++; leaches = -1(+++).

I like John Seely Brown's explanation---His model of Silicon Valley---the FLOWS & HOMES model it is commonly called.Outsourcing Research appeals for giants like P&G that are perpetually less innovative than their competitor giants Lever Brothers and Nestle, and so forth. Outsourcing Research for PARC and Xerox makes much much less sense BUT Xerox was dying, really in big trouble and has sold off and shrunk a lot nearly every year of the last 20 years. It is not the IP issue that breaks the Research Outsourcing deal of Hipple lead users formulation and Cheseborough's Idea Oursourcing---BUT Boredom----P&G's famous idea network (an IBM idea really) connected retired R&D types to posted internal R&D stymied efforts---BUT boredom soon set in and it paid less and less in interest and income to paw through reams of same ol same ol stuff. Initial boosts of connectedness bring boosts of creativity that die out rapidly as familiarity develops with new contacts.

PULSED systems outperform mere increases in connectedness (think photos of last night dinners on facebook)---but vendors do not design and sell PULSED systems (except a few China start ups by very smart Beijing U and TsingHua students.

Flows and Homes theory of "the Valley" is the idea that where an idea gets born almost never is where it fits well and gets enough attention, priority and love to develop, so we all have to develop the norm of letting go, letting our great ideas and people go out to find homes that love them. THAT WAY more ideas total get developed than if we keep giant libraries of unfitting ideas we do not release for fear of some inchoate loss. PARC does NOW have a TIMIDITY it did not have in the past and it is LESS engaged in the entire Valley (Santa Clara county and environs) than it was 20 years ago, by far. These are related---the lack of guts and boldness comes from too many overly expert employees, not enough wild bold impossibles-chasing youth and nutters. Sort of SONY versus APPLE.